Midnight come again (23 page)

"Alice Chevak is dead," he said.

She blinked. "What?"

"Alice Chevak is dead," he repeated.

"Baloney," Kate said. She even gave a little laugh. "I just had dinner with Alice and her whole family last night. She's not dead. You've made some kind of mistake, she's--"

"Kate."

She looked up and met his eyes. "Jim, look, I know you think--"

"Alice Chevak is dead."

There was a long silence.

"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you sooner, but when I got back from dinner the Cessna was in and needed cleaning, and I just now--" "How?" Kate said thinly.

"What?"

"How did it happen?"

"They found Alice's body floating in Brown Slough." He stopped, and she said, "What else?"

"Kate--"

"What else?"

Reluctantly--if he didn't tell her she would find out on her own--he said, "They're saying she'd been hit. A lot. And hard." Kate sat very still. She thought about Alice, plump and cheerful behind her nameplate at the bank. She thought of Alice, bustling about the kitchen of her home, helping her mother with dinner, making sure her grandfather got his coffee just how he liked it, harrying her daughter from her books into bed. She thought of Alice, offering the hospitality of her home to a classmate she hadn't seen for thirteen years.

She thought of Alice, thrilled at the thought of helping in a real live investigation. Alice, who had asked no questions, had only wanted to help out a friend.

"I am the angel of death," Kate said softly.

"What?"

"I get people killed."

"Kate, stop it."

"Abel."

"Kate--"

"Emaa."

"Kate, no--"

"Jack."

"Kate, don't--"

"And now Alice. I am the angel of death."

"Kate!" He shook her again, hard.

She fought him, shoving him away or trying to. He wouldn't let go.

"Kate, you didn't beat up Alice, you didn't have anything to do with her death. Stop this, now, damn it, knock it off!"

She was quick and strong and slippery, and his head hurt abominably.

Unable to subdue her any other way, he pushed her down on the bunk and lay on top of her. "Just settle down, damn it, Kate."

She tried once more to pull free, and couldn't.

She broke then. She broke quickly and she broke completely, sobs welling up from some bottomless subterranean pool, raw, painful sounds that hurt him who heard them as much as her who suffered them. She lay beneath him, helpless, out of control, as all the tears she hadn't wept over Jack's death overflowed in a deluge that threatened to drown them both.

"I couldn't even scream because they would have heard me," she said, gasping. "They would have heard me, and killed me, too. And I was careless." Her fist thumped his shoulder as hard as it could, which was pretty hard.

"Hush now," he said. He slid his hands under her and gathered her up, rocking her. "It's all right. It's all right, Kate."

"No, it isn't. It never will be again." She was barely aware of what she was saying. "I wasn't paying attention. Two people were dead, what was I thinking? I wasn't thinking. Jack was going to take early retirement and move to the homestead. He was happy. I was happy. I was scared, but I was happy. Two people were already dead and there were a couple of homicidal maniacs on the loose and I was too happy to be careful. How could I be so sloppy?" She hit him again. "How could I be so careless?"

She hit him a third time, a fourth, a fifth. "How could I be so stupid!"

He caught her hands and pressed them against the mattress. "Hush now," he said, helpless to say anything else, determined only to comfort, only to soothe. "It's okay, I'm right here. I'm right here, and everything's going to be all right."

"I am the angel of death," she said in a kind of stunned mumble, tears halting at last, to leave her drained and exhausted. "I don't pay attention, and I get people killed. I got Alice killed."

He held her because there was nothing else he could do for her. "Shhh," he said, "there now, everything will be all right. It's okay, Kate, it's all right."

He held her, he rubbed her back with gentle hands, he rocked her, and he told her everything would be all right over and over again, and presently he saw that she had fallen asleep. He gathered her close, tucked her head beneath his chin, and whispered, "It's all right now.

Everything will be all right now."

He closed his eyes against the insistent throbbing of his head, and followed her into oblivion.

When she resurfaced, minutes or hours later, she was still on the bed.

Jim's hands had relaxed their grip, and he had shifted u. lie next to her. He was big and warm and solid and alive. She turned her face into his throat His pulse beat strongly beneath her lips. He smelled like man.

She raised her head and kissed him.

Still mostly asleep but automatically attuned to the female body next to his, his hands slid around her waist He kissed her back. He was very good at it, and with an inarticulate murmur of pleasure she kissed him again, and again, soft, fugitive, luring kisses, nibbling at his lips, teasing him into kissing her back, retreating when he did so, responding when he pursued.

It had been so long, and he felt so good. She hooked one knee over his hip and urged him closer. She slid a stealthy hand down between his legs, pulled at his zipper, found the opening. He fit into her palm as if he'd been made for it.

His hands were busy, too, cupping her breasts, gently exploring the cleft between her legs, until--"What the hell? Kate?"

She didn't want to talk. She didn't want to think. All she wanted was to feel.

"Kate, wait a minute, I don't think--" Hands slid from her breasts and she whimpered and dragged them back. She kissed him again, tightened her hand, rolled to her back. He made a sound deep in his throat and came over her, settling in between her legs. "Oh yes," she said, the merest thread of sound, and pulled at his jeans. Her panties were already gone.

She felt him nudging at the entrance to her body, she felt how wet she was and how hard he was and how ready they both were, and she arched up langourously, opening to him, inviting him in.

Again, a shaken voice against her ear. "Kate, no, this isn't--we shouldn't--damn it, don't do that--" "Please," she murmured, and crossed her ankles in the small of his back.

He slid inside her as if he were coming home, a perfect fit, as arousing as it was comforting. "Jack," she whispered. "Oh Jack, I've missed you so much."

The big body froze over her, in her, and with a protesting murmur she arched up again, wanting, needing, so very ready, he couldn't stop now.

It seemed he couldn't. He began to thrust, deep, deeper, deepest, and she whispered her approval and dug her nails into his back and urged him on.

The man in bed with her swore in a rough voice, and fell over the edge with her.

She woke up thirty minutes before her shift started, just enough time for her to grab a quick, necessary shower and present herself at the hangar at one minute before midnight. Jim was unloading freight out of the back of the Cessna as Baird checked it off a manifest.

Baird saw her first. "About time," he said, rather unfairly since it was exactly midnight and she was exactly on time. But then she'd spoiled him over the last four months, coming in early, staying late, having no life but work. "Here." He shoved the clipboard at her. "And don't even think about getting me up for anything less than an actual crash."

He stamped outside. The orange truck started up and was off with clash of gears.

"Kate," Jim said.

"Where does this shipment go?" she said, looking down at the clipboard.

"Kate, I--"

"I don't want to talk about it, Jim."

"Well, I do. I'm sorry, I--"

"You sure are."

A silence. "I beg your pardon?"

"You sure are sorry," she shouted. "You took advantage!"

"Excuse me. I took advantage?"

"Yes! You prick, you've been after me for years, and you knew you'd never get me in the sack any other way, so when I was down about as low as I've ever been you took advantage!" "Now just wait a minute here," he said. "Just wait one goddamn minute. I did not--"

"Like hell! I'd like to kill you, you bastard! How could you?"

"How could I!" he shouted in his turn. "How could I not? Whose hand was in whose pants? You were all over me when I woke up! I tried to stop and you wouldn't let me!"

"Liar!"

"You begged me!"

"I did not!" "You know what?" he said, suddenly, dangerously calm. "All right, fine, I took advantage. I mean what the hell, there I was, there you were, we even had a bed. It was great. I loved every minute of it.

Especially right there at the end, when you called me Jack."

He dropped the box he was holding, to what sounded like the total disintegration of whatever was inside. "It's midnight, my shift's over, I am out of here."

He stalked outside and was halfway to town before he realized that he'd even started walking in that direction. All he knew was he needed to get as far away as possible from the infuriating woman in the hangar. His legs ate up the ground at a furious rate, while he called Kate every name in the book and himself seventeen different kinds of a fool.

There were flashes in the distance that caught the corner of his eye, and he looked up to see fireworks. He remembered then that it was the morning of the Fourth of July.

Last year on the Fourth he'd been in Aleganik Bay, working a murder. And working it with Kate Shugak.

George had flown him out to Kate's aunties' fish camp, and they had caught Kate and Jack going at it on the shore of the creek. It was evident that they'd been playing grabass all the way to the airstrip, too; Kate had had her T-shirt half out of her jeans and Jack had had that look, the one men get when they are this close to getting some, eager, edgy, annoyed at the interruption and in a hurry to get back to it. He, Jim Chopin, had been irritated with Jack Morgan that evening.

He, Jim Chopin, had wanted Jack Morgan on the other side of the earth.

He, Jim Chopin, had been jealous.

He stopped dead in the middle of the road. "What?" he demanded out loud of no one in particular. "Who said that?"

Nobody answered. He started walking again. "Jealous, my royal blue ass.

She's just another woman, she held out longer than most, so what. I've had her now, time to move on."

He tried not to think about what would have happened if Bobby Clark had heard him say that. Or George Perry. Or Chick Noyukpuk. Or Bernie, or Old Sam, or Demetri.

Or Jack Morgan. He, Jim Chopin, would have been on his royal blue ass if Jack Morgan had been within a ten foot radius during the last five minutes.

Try the last three hours.

Jim refused utterly to acknowledge any shame and moved on briskly.

On the outskirts of town a white Suburban pulled up next to him, and he looked up to see the insignia of his own service on the door. The trooper behind the wheel said, "Jim Chopin?"

"Sorry, wrong guy, I'm Jim Churchill," he said, wary.

She raised an eyebrow. "First Sergeant Jim Chopin?" "I guess so," he said, yielding.

"We need to talk." She leaned over and opened the passenger door. "Get in." "I take it somebody told you who I am."

"You take it right. How's your head?"

"Lousy."

"Remember anything yet?"

"No."

"I saw you in the cafe yesterday evening. You should have joined me."

"I didn't know we weren't playing Superman and Clark Kent anymore. How is your homicide investigation going?" He caught her look. "One of the guys you were talking to came into the cafe afterward and told us."

"Yeah. Well." The knowledge that she was talking to a fellow officer made her relax her guard. "We sent the body to Anchorage today for autopsy. That'll tell us whether she died of the beating or drowned. It looked like her neck was broken."

"Who was the last person to see her alive?"

"She was a teller, worked at the local bank. One of the other tellers said they were walking by and saw her inside yesterday at four in the afternoon."

"On a Sunday?"

"She told her mother she was behind and that she was going in to work some overtime."

And Kate had had dinner with her Saturday night.

"That's not unusual," Zarr said, misreading his silence. "It gets crazy around here in the summertime. Everybody gets in a lot of overtime."

Jim looked at his watch. "Including you." She smiled. "Including me."

Carroll and Casanare were waiting for them at the trooper post. "Ah,"

Jim said, "Boris and Natasha, what a surprise to see you again.

Especially since you're both in Anchorage, reaching out to informers, gathering information. Amassing evidence. Building a case."